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Gundam's Yoshikazu Yasuhiko Wins Japan Academy Film Prize Association's Special Award
posted on by Alex Mateo
The Japan Academy Film Prize Association announced on Tuesday that it is presenting manga creator and animator Yoshikazu Yasuhiko with the Association's Special Award for lifetime achievement at the 44th annual Japan Academy Film Prizes. The Association's Special Award honors individuals who engage in functions that contribute to film production. The awards ceremony will take place at the Grand Prince Hotel New Takanawa in Tokyo on March 19.
Illustrator Matsuo Ikehata and gun effects and weapon advisor Kikuo Notomi also won the Association's Special Awards for this year's event.
Animator Yôichi Kotabe (Horus - Prince of the Sun, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Pokémon) and optical and film engineer Tetsuo Kaneko (Macross Plus, Ghost in the Shell) received the Association's Special Awards for lifetime achievement at the 43rd annual Japan Academy Prizes in 2020.
Yasuhiko began his career as an animator at Mushi Productions in 1970. He designed the characters on the studio's Nozomi in the Sun 1971 series, which was his first collaboration with the show's storyboard artist and future Mobile Suit Gundam creator Yoshiyuki Tomino. The pair also worked together on Space Battleship Yamato's storyboards and Brave Raideen, before Tomino launched the Mobile Suit Gundam series in 1979 with character designs by Yasuhiko. Since then, Yasuhiko worked on character designs for other installments in the Gundam franchise, including Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam and Mobile Suit Gundam F91.
In 2001, Yasuhiko launched his Gundam: The Origin manga, a retelling of the original 1979 series' story. That manga served as the inspiration for the Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin anime, a prequel to the original series. Yasuhiko worked as chief director, character designer, and storyboarder for the anime.
Yasuhiko launched his "final new series" Inui to Tatsumi: Siberia Shuppei Hishi- (Inui and Tatsumi: Secret History of the Siberian Intervention) Kodansha's Monthly Afternoon magazine on September 25.
Yasuhiko has also worked on other projects, such as Arion, Crusher Joe: The Movie, and Venus Wars.
Sources: Japan Academy Prize Association, Comic Natalie
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